This wonderful Jesus is not only our Savior but He is also the marvelous captain of our salvation. And He is leading us even during this broadcast into the goal of our salvation. Glory is God expressed – this may seem simple but nonetheless this is what the Bible reveals. But just as we need our entire body to be adequately expressed, God desires to bring us as the members of His body into the region of His glory. So He’s provided us with a captain of salvation to lead us into glory.

We’ve spoken our first life study of Hebrews about though it’s a mysterious and somewhat hidden book to a lot of Christians when we’re given just one or two keys, it opens up like a flower. We’ve just spoken of the two of the keys that we’ve been given and these will be part of our life study today: river-crossers and the captain of salvation.

The word “Hebrew” means river-crosser. And, in this particular book, we have a marvelous speaking from God especially to the Jewish believers, those who have contacted God by faith, but were lingering in Judaism. They were called by God in this book to cross the river, to become river-crossers, to come forward and to leave so many things on one side and enter into Christ, into grace, into the region of glory on the other side. In Matthew 17 where the Lord was transfigured and Moses and Elijah also showed up miraculously, representing the law and the prophets. And there God was very clear – do not honour anyone other than His Son. Don’t honour the law, don’t honour the prophets because Christ is the fulfillment of everything of the law and the prophets. So we need to be the river-crossers and this book indicates that not only the Jewish believers but also any of us who have contacted God by faith need to cross anything that’s holding us back from this dear One into Himself as the region of glory. We need to especially cross the river from religion to Christ and we need to cross the river from the law to grace, cross the river from the old covenant to the new covenant, from ritual to reality, from the earthly things to the heavenly things, from the soul to our spirit. So this is the river-crossers.

Then secondly, this captain of our salvation is none other than our Christ who from the moment of His incarnation by the putting on of the flesh through His resurrection was a fighter to lead, even to break into the region of glory. Within Him was the seed of glory, the divine glory was concealed within His human shell from the time of His incarnation. If you observe and read carefully the details of His living and even through His death and resurrection, there was a constant fighting going on that even His humanity would be brought into this glory. The desire to fight through into the glory so that both God and man could be together in this glory. He Himself could be the first God-man who is fully in the glory. So He’s the One who is always fighting to enter into this region of glory to bring man, first of all His humanity and then a corporate humanity into this region of glory which is just God Himself expressed. And now He’s qualified to be the captain of our salvation to lead us into glory.